Several types of medical pouches are available in the marketplace. One of the more common types of pouches is manufactured from two separate web materials, one being porous to allow relevant gases or steam to pass therethrough and the other being a transparent, heat sealable film or laminate to allow visual inspection of the pouch contents. Where visual inspection of the contents is unnecessary, an opaque material may be utilized instead of a transparent material. Also, nonporous web materials can be employed for those applications where sterilization is accomplished by methods other than gas or steam (e.g. radiation sterilization). Pouches have been produced for some time in a roll form wherein a plurality of the pouches are initially connected together. An important disadvantage of conventional roll form pouch construction techniques is that they are designed for severing each individual pouch from the roll as it is desired for use and are generally not suitable for sterilization. As will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, individual pouch input is unsatisfactory for automatic, high speed pouch loading and sealing equipment.
In the health care field, manufacturers normally purchase individual medical pouches, banded 100 per bundle in boxes of 1000, more or less, depending on the pouch size so that the corrugated carton weighs less than 40 pounds for ease of handling by the workers. In order to package a device, the operator must first obtain pouches from the bundles and open each pouch one at a time, inserting a device in each pouch followed by sealing of the pouch and repacking the filled pouches for sterilization in suitable corrugated cartons for shipment to the hospitals. Needless to say, such an operation is time consuming.
Currently, the in-hospital packaging systems use bags supplied in boxes of 250, or other count, depending on the pouch size and the supplier's standards. In addition, a continuous roll of 100 feet of "tubing" or "rollstock" comprising a web of porous paper sealed along the outer edges to a laminate of polypropylene to polyester film enables the hospital workers to cut off lengths of rollstock and produce individual pouches. The process is somewhat cumbersome in that the rollstock must be cut from the roll, one cut end must be sealed, the product inserted, and the second cut end must be sealed. This process is repeated for each pouch prepared for sterilization.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,254,828 to Lerner discloses a flexible container strip formed of first and second plies joined together along the sides of the strip. The two plies are transversely sealed together at spaced intervals along the length of the strip so as to define a plurality of containers having closed end portions and opposite end portions. These containers are oriented in the same direction with the opposite end portions of each container being connected to the closed end portion of an adjacent container by one ply having perforations extending transversely thereof. The other of the plies is formed with transverse slit openings spaced along the length of the strip, the slit openings into each container being located adjacent to its opposite end portion. While the Lerner containers provide a number of advantages when utilized in conjunction with automatic loading and sealing equipment, the container construction has several disadvantages when it is desired to have the slit openings overlying the perforated connecting portions. In the manufacture of this type of container, any attempt to sever one ply to form the slit openings prior to the sealing of the two plies together would require complicated ply handling to achieve the desired result. On the other hand, any attempt after the sealing operation to sever one ply completely while simultaneously only perforating the overlying portion of the second ply would require costly specialized and highly accurate equipment.